All historic sites
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417 sites · page 7 of 18
Former Shiroyama National School A-bomb Remains
旧城山国民学校校舎（城山小学校平和祈念館）
A surviving stairwell of Shiroyama National School preserves fire damage from the Nagasaki atomic bombing. Now a peace museum within an operating school, it is open during designated visiting hours.
Former Supreme Military Council Site (Miyakezaka)
旧軍事参議院跡（三宅坂）
The Supreme Military Council (軍事参議院, Gunji Sangiin) was the highest military advisory body to the Emperor of Japan, established in 1903 at Miyakezaka, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, near the Imperial Palace. Comprising senior generals and admirals, it advised on national defense policy and military strategy. Its posts became largely honorary over time, though the councillors retained influence in Army personnel matters, until its abolition in November 1945. The site now houses the National Diet Front Garden and the Kensei Kinenkan (Constitutional Memorial Hall).
Former US Embassy Tokyo (Current US Embassy)
旧アメリカ大使館（現アメリカ大使館）
The US Embassy compound in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo, has occupied the same site since 1890. The Ambassador's Residence, completed in 1931 by architects H. Van Buren Magonigle and Antonin Raymond, was the venue for pre-war US-Japan negotiations (1941) led by Ambassador Joseph C. Grew. On December 8, 1941 (Japan time), following Pearl Harbor, diplomatic relations were severed and embassy staff were interned on the compound grounds until repatriation via exchange ship in June 1942. During the Allied Occupation (1945–1952), General Douglas MacArthur used the Ambassador's Residence as his personal quarters. On September 27, 1945, Emperor Hirohito made a historic visit to MacArthur at this residence — their famous photograph together, taken by Lt. Gaetano Faillace, became one of the most iconic images of the postwar era. Hirohito and MacArthur met eleven times in all between 1945 and 1951, beginning with this visit.
Former Yokohama Specie Bank Headquarters (Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History)
旧横浜正金銀行本店本館
The former headquarters of the Yokohama Specie Bank (横浜正金銀行), Japan's preeminent wartime foreign-exchange bank, completed in 1904 in German Neo-Baroque style. Designed by Tsumaki Yorinaka and Endo Oto, the three-story stone-and-brick building with its iconic octagonal dome served as the nerve center of Japan's international financial operations, including wartime foreign-exchange controls and management of enemy-nation assets under the 1941 Enemy Property Control Law. After Japan's surrender, the bank was designated a Closed Institution by GHQ/SCAP in 1946 and dissolved, with operations transferred to the newly established Bank of Tokyo. The building survived both the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake (losing its dome to fire) and the devastating 1945 Yokohama air raids. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 1969, it now houses the Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History.
Fukui Air Raid Site
福井空襲跡
The site of one of the most devastating strategic bombing raids on Japan. On July 19, 1945, 127 B-29 Superfortress bombers dropped over 865 tons of incendiary bombs on Fukui City in 81 minutes, destroying 84.8% of the city — the third-highest destruction rate among Japanese cities. The raid killed 1,576 people outright (1,684 including those who later died of injuries) and left about 85,600 homeless.
Fukuoka POW Camp Headquarters
福岡俘虜収容所本所
The headquarters of the Fukuoka Prisoner of War Camp system, the largest POW camp network in western Japan during World War II. Established on January 1, 1943, within the Western District Army Headquarters compound in Fukuoka City, the administrative office oversaw more than 30 branch camps across Kyushu and, initially, Yamaguchi and Hiroshima prefectures, where thousands of Allied POWs — American, British, Australian, and Dutch — were forced to labor in coal mines, shipyards, and factories. The camp system was commanded by Colonel Ijyu Sugasawa and later Colonel Manjiro Fukumoto. Sugasawa was executed for war crimes after the war. The headquarters itself held no prisoners, serving purely as the administrative nerve center for the entire Fukuoka camp group.
Fukuromachi Elementary School Peace Museum
袋町小学校平和資料館
A hibaku (A-bombed) building located just 460 meters from the hypocenter, where the reinforced concrete West Building of Fukuromachi National School survived the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945. The charred interior walls preserve chalk messages written by survivors desperately seeking missing family members, rediscovered decades later behind plaster during renovation. Opened as a peace museum in April 2002.
Fukuryu Special Attack Unit Training Base
伏龍特攻隊訓練基地
Training base at Yokosuka for the Fukuryu (Crouching Dragon) special attack unit — human mine divers equipped with explosive charges on bamboo poles, intended to destroy Allied landing craft during the anticipated invasion of the Japanese home islands. One of the most desperate suicide weapons conceived at the end of WWII, with training conducted at Nobi Beach in Yokosuka under the Yokosuka Anti-Submarine School.
Fukuyama Castle (Fukuyama Air Raid Heritage Site)
福山城（福山大空襲戦災遺跡）
Fukuyama Castle, originally built in 1622, lost its National Treasure-designated tenshu (main keep) and most structures in the devastating August 8, 1945 firebombing that destroyed approximately 80% of the city. The raid by 91 B-29 bombers came just two days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The tenshu was reconstructed in ferro-concrete in 1966. Surviving wartime structures include the Fushimi Yagura and Sujigane Gate (both Important Cultural Properties), while the castle stone walls still bear red heat discoloration from the firestorm.
Hakata Port Repatriation Memorial
博多港引揚記念碑（那の津往還）
A 15-meter-tall weathering steel monument at Hakata Port in Fukuoka, erected in 1996 to commemorate the 1.39 million Japanese repatriates who returned through this port from mainland Asia and the Korean Peninsula after World War II, as well as the 500,000 Koreans and Chinese who departed from here to return to their homelands. Sculpted by Toyofuku Tomonori, the work titled "Nanotsu Oukan" won the 1996 Fukuoka City Urban Landscape Award.
Hakodate Seikan Ferry Memorial Ship Mashu Maru
函館市青函連絡船記念館摩周丸
The former Seikan railway ferry Mashu Maru, which made her last crossing in 1988 and has been moored at Hakodate Port as a museum ship since 1991, now serves as a floating museum documenting the 80-year history of the Seikan ferry service, including the catastrophic July 1945 US air raids that destroyed the entire ferry fleet and severed Hokkaido from Honshu.
Hamamatsu Air Raids & Naval Bombardment Site
浜松艦砲射撃・空襲跡
Hamamatsu was attacked unusually often for a city of its size during World War II, enduring 27 air raids and naval bombardments between 1944 and 1945 that killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed 60.3% of the city. On July 29, 1945, a fleet led by USS South Dakota and HMS King George V conducted one of the last naval bombardments of the war, marking the final time a British battleship fired its guns in combat.
Hamamatsu Army Flying School
浜松陸軍飛行学校
The Imperial Japanese Army's primary bombing and heavy aviation training center, established in 1933 around a bombing training section created in 1925. Hamamatsu was among the first Japanese cities attacked by B-29 Superfortresses and suffered devastating firebombing raids in 1945. Today the site is JASDF Hamamatsu Air Base, home to the Air Park (浜松広報館) aviation museum.
Harima Shipyard (Aioi Works)
播磨造船所
Harima Shipyard in Aioi, Hyogo Prefecture was one of Imperial Japan's key wartime shipbuilding facilities. Acquired by Suzuki Shoten in 1916, it grew from 250 to over 20,000 workers during WWII. Its Matsunoura plant, built in 1943-44 under Navy directive, mass-produced wartime standard ships (戦時標準船) using assembly-line methods, completing 163 vessels totaling 136,490 gross tons — ranking first among modified E-type builders. On July 28, 1945, approximately 30 US carrier aircraft bombed the shipyard, killing 39 people.
Hario Radio Transmission Station
旧佐世保無線電信所（針尾送信所）
Three massive reinforced concrete radio towers about 136 meters tall built in 1922 by the Imperial Japanese Navy for long-wave fleet communications. The station is famously — though inconclusively — linked to the transmission of the coded order "Niitakayama Nobore 1208" that launched the Pearl Harbor attack on December 2, 1941. Designated a National Important Cultural Property in 2013 and a Japan Heritage site in 2016.
Hikari Naval Arsenal
光海軍工廠
Hikari Naval Arsenal was the Imperial Japanese Navy's seventh naval arsenal, established in Hikari City, Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1940. The sprawling 4-square-kilometer coastal facility produced steel, torpedoes, engines, cannon, and bombs, and from 1944 housed a training and sortie base for kaiten human torpedoes. At its peak the arsenal employed approximately 30,000 workers including 6,500 mobilized students. On August 14, 1945 — the day before Japan's surrender — 167 B-29 bombers devastated the complex in five waves, killing 738 people.
Himeji Castle — The Miracle Survival in the 1945 Air Raids
姫路城（白鷺城）― 姫路空襲と天守閣の奇蹟
Himeji Castle, Japan's finest surviving original castle and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, miraculously survived the devastating July 3-4, 1945 firebombing that destroyed over 63% of Himeji city. An incendiary bomb pierced the top floor of the main keep but failed to detonate — an unexploded dud that was reportedly carried down the steep stairs by an army ordnance officer the following morning. The castle's survival, in dramatic contrast to the destruction of Nagoya Castle (May 14, 1945), stands as one of the most remarkable preservation stories of WWII. Residents had camouflaged the brilliant white walls with netting dyed black, and B-29 radar operators reportedly misidentified the moat as a lake, inadvertently sparing the castle from the heaviest bombing. These multiple coincidences — radar misidentification, an unexploded bomb, and courageous human action — combined to preserve this irreplaceable National Treasure.
Hiroshima Communications Hospital (A-bombed Building)
広島逓信病院旧外来棟被爆資料室
The Hiroshima Communications Hospital, located approximately 1.37 km from the atomic bomb hypocenter, was one of the few medical facilities that survived the bombing on August 6, 1945. Despite severe blast damage, the reinforced concrete building did not collapse, and it immediately became a critical emergency treatment center where over 250 severely injured victims were admitted on the first day alone. Hospital director Dr. Hachiya Michihiko, himself badly wounded by flying glass, returned to duty within days and later published "Hiroshima Diary," a 56-day account published in translation in 18 countries.
Hiroshima Gokoku Shrine
広島護國神社
A Gokoku Shrine in Hiroshima dedicated to approximately 92,000 war dead from Hiroshima Prefecture, including about 10,000 mobilized students and Women's Volunteer Corps members killed by the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. Originally founded in 1868 to enshrine Boshin War dead, it was destroyed by the atomic bombing and rebuilt within Hiroshima Castle grounds in 1956. It represents the nationwide Gokoku Shrine system used for wartime spiritual mobilization and remains a key site for peace remembrance ceremonies.
Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital & Atomic Bomb Survivors Hospital
広島赤十字・原爆病院
A Japanese Red Cross hospital located 1.5 km from the atomic bomb hypocenter in Hiroshima. Despite severe blast damage on August 6, 1945, the reinforced concrete building survived and its staff — more than half of whom had been killed or injured — immediately began treating thousands of victims. ICRC delegate Marcel Junod recorded that 1,000 patients were admitted on the first day alone. In 1956 the world's first hospital specializing in atomic bomb survivor treatment was established on its grounds; the two merged in 1988.
Hitachi Air Raid & Naval Bombardment Memorial (Tōrin Monument)
日立空襲艦砲射撃慰霊碑「陶輪碑」
A memorial monument erected in 1957 at Narisawa Cemetery in Hitachi City to commemorate the victims of the devastating Allied naval bombardment and B-29 air raids on Hitachi in the summer of 1945, which killed over 1,500 civilians and destroyed most of the city.
Honkawa Elementary School Peace Museum (A-bombed School Building)
本川小学校平和資料館（旧本川国民学校 被爆校舎）
The closest school to the atomic bomb hypocenter in Hiroshima, located just 410 meters away. Completed in 1928 as the city's first reinforced concrete school building, it partially survived the August 6, 1945 blast while nearly all of its approximately 400 students and 10 teachers perished. The preserved basement and structural shell were opened as a peace museum in 1988.
Hotel New Grand
ホテルニューグランド
A landmark Western-style hotel in Yokohama opened in 1927, designed by architect Watanabe Jin. On August 30, 1945, General Douglas MacArthur spent his first night in occupied Japan in Room 315 after landing at Atsugi Airfield. The room is preserved today as the "MacArthur's Suite" with his original writing desk and chair, making it one of the most tangible relics of the Allied occupation's opening chapter.
Ichinomiya Fu-Go Balloon Bomb Launch Base Site
風船爆弾一宮打上基地跡
Site of the Second Battalion launch base for Operation Fu-Go (ふ号作戦), located on the Pacific coast of Ichinomiya Town, Chiba Prefecture. One of three bases that launched approximately 9,300 hydrogen balloon bombs toward North America between November 1944 and April 1945. The base operated six launch stations with 700 personnel. Today only an informational panel put up by the town of Ichinomiya commemorates the site.